ZOUCHE, RICHARD (1590–1661), civilian, son of Francis Zouche, lord of the manor of Ansty, Wiltshire, and sometime M.P., who was son of Sir John Zouche, a younger son of John, eighth baron Zouche of Harringworth, was born at Ansty in 1590. His mother is said to have been Philippa, sixth daughter of George Ludlow of Hill Deverel, Wiltshire. He was elected scholar of Winchester in 1601, scholar of New College, Oxford, in 1607, fellow in 1609. He graduated as B.C.L. in 1614, and D.C.L. in 1619, having been admitted in 1617 an advocate of Doctors' Commons. In 1620 he succeeded John Budden [q. v.] (who had been first the deputy and then the successor of Alberico Gentili [q. v.]) as regius professor of civil law at Oxford. It was apparently in 1622 that he married Sarah, daughter of John Harte of the family of that name, settled at Brill in Oxfordshire, a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and, having thus vacated his fellowship, entered himself in 1623 as a fellow commoner at Wadham College, and continued to occupy that position till in 1625 he was appointed principal of St. Alban Hall. In 1621 and 1624, through the influence of his cousin Edward, eleventh baron Zouche [q. v.], he had been elected M.P. for Hythe.

Henceforth Zouche seems to have divided his attention between his academical engagements and his practice in London. He took a leading part in the Laudian codification of the statutes of the university (1629–1633). He acted for many years as ‘assessor’ of the vice-chancellor's court, and in 1632 became chancellor of the diocese. At the same time he was making for himself such a position at Doctors' Commons as resulted in his appointment, on the death of Sir Henry Marten in 1641, to be judge of the high court of admiralty. In the civil war the sympathies of Zouche were on the side of the king. His departure for Oxford in 1643, without payment of a parliamentary assessment, was followed by the levy of a distress upon the furniture in his London chambers. In 1646 he was one of those who negotiated, on behalf of the royalist forces in Oxford, the articles for the surrender of the city to Fairfax, signed 22 June, under which he and the other malignants there were permitted within six months to compound for their estates, without taking the covenant, and to go to London for that purpose. He petitioned accordingly, and in November of the same year was allowed to compound for interests in land at Harvill, near Uxbridge, at Ascott in Oxfordshire, and in Knightrider Street and Doctors' Commons in the city of London, at one tenth of their value, viz. 333l. In 1647 he was busy in drafting, together with Dr. Robert Sanderson [q. v.], the ‘Reasons’ of the university of Oxford for disagreeing with the solemn league and covenant and the negative oath; but in the following year he seems to have in some sort submitted to the parliamentary visitors for the reformation of the university (though his name does not occur in their register), so as not only to have retained his academical preferments as long as he lived, but also to have induced the visitors to restore his son Richard to a demyship of which they had deprived him. Zouche was, however, not allowed to retain the judgeship of the admiralty, which was in 1649 conferred upon Dr. Exton, but was sufficiently in favour with Cromwell to be placed by him upon the special commission of oyer and terminer, consisting of three judges, three civilians, and three laymen, for the trial of Don Pantaleone Sa, the brother of the Portuguese ambassador, for murder committed in a brawl at the Exchange. Sa was condemned on 4 July 1654, and executed, and Zouche some years later wrote a book to defend the judgment in which he had taken part. In opposition to the now accepted view, he holds that the diplomatic privilege allowed to an ambassador does not extend to a member of his suite.

Zouche seems to have passed the remainder of the commonwealth time chiefly at Oxford, and to have been looked upon with some suspicion by both political parties. On the one hand, he was defeated in 1657 for the keepership of the archives by Dr. John Wallis (1616–1703) [q. v.], who had gone about saying of him ‘that he was a malignant and talked against Oliver.’ On the other hand, as having submitted to the visitors of 1648, he was an unacceptable member of the new commission which was sent down in 1660 to undo the work of its predecessors, by restoring the deprived professors and fellows to their former positions. No attention was, however, paid to complaints on this score, and Zouche and his colleagues completed in ten weeks the work which had been entrusted to them. On 4 Feb. 1661 Zouche was replaced in the judgeship of the admiralty, but enjoyed the post for less than a month. He died at his house in Doctors' Commons on 1 March 1661, and was buried at Fulham, near the grave of his daughter, Catherine Powell. Sarah Zouche long survived her husband, and dying in 1683, at the lodgings of her son-in-law, the provost of Oriel, was buried under a memorial tablet in the church of St. Peter's in the East at Oxford.

Richard and Sarah Zouche had six children—two sons and four daughters—of whom Anne married Robert Say, provost of Oriel, and, dying in 1687, was honoured by a monument at St. Mary's; and Sarah married Dr. Lydall, warden of Merton, and, dying in 1712, was buried with an inscription in the college chapel. She alone of all Zouche's children left issue. One of her daughters, Frances Lydall, married Dr. W. Walker, fellow of Oriel, whose descendant, the Rev. R. Zouche Walker, late fellow of Magdalen College, is the owner of a beautiful portrait of Zouche by Cornelius Jansen, representing him as a man of about thirty-five, in ruff and doublet, with refined features and pointed beard. An etching of this picture is prefixed to the reprint of ‘The Dove.’

Zouche made a very favourable impression upon his contemporaries. Bishop Sanderson said to a friend: ‘The learned civilian, Doctor Zouche (who lately died), had writ “Elementa Jurisprudentiæ,” which was a book he could also say without book; and that no wise man could read it too often, or commend it too much.’ Anthony Wood says that Zouche was ‘an exact artist, a subtile logician, expert historian, and for the knowledge in, and practice of, the civil law, the chief person of his time; as his works, much esteemed beyond the seas (where several of them are reprinted), partly testify. He was so well vers'd also in the statutes of the university, and controversies between the members thereof and the city, that none after Twyne's death went beyond him. As his birth was noble, so was his behaviour and discourse, and as personable and handsome, so naturally sweet, pleasing, and affable. The truth is there was nothing wanting but a froward spirit for his advancement; but the interruption of the times, which silenc'd his profession, would have given a stop to his rise had he been of another disposition.’ Zouche was, in fact, a good specimen of the sort of civil lawyer who was produced at Oxford, while the thorough drill of the old system of legal training, as revived by the impulse given to it by the Italian refugee, Alberico Gentili, still lasted on. Zouche and his junior contemporary, Arthur Duck [q. v.], both pupils of Budden, the successor of Gentili in the regius professorship, are the last of the old race of Oxford civilians whose writings still enjoy a European reputation.

The literary activity of Zouche, taking into account his labours in other directions, was as surprising in amount as it was varied in character. His first, and somewhat juvenile, publication (No. 1 in the list which follows) was a poem, descriptive of Europe, Asia, and Africa, after the manner of the ‘Periegesis’ of Dionysius. In a euphuistic preface the author apologises for his poetical venture, having known some ‘whose credit hath challenged respect, exceeding strong in prejudice against the composing and reading such trifles.’ In maturer years Zouche attempted a play (No. 6), if it be rightly ascribed to him, intended to be performed before an academical audience, fitted indeed for no other, since the dramatis personæ are such bloodless abstractions as ‘Fallacy,’ ‘Proposition,’ and ‘Ambiguity.’ Quite late in life he produced a little book of logical, rhetorical, and ethical maxims (No. 14). Most of Zouche's writings were, however, of a professional character. Of these several were handbooks for disputations at the university (Nos. 11, 12, 15), and two were of a polemical cast (Nos. 13, 16). But his most important achievement was the mapping out of the whole field of law, and the subsequent examination in detail of its various departments. The ‘Elementa Jurisprudentiæ’ (No. 2), although in terminology wholly, and in substance mainly, a setting forth of Roman law, is intended to supply a generally applicable scheme of legal science, distributed under the two main heads of ‘Jus’ and ‘Judicium’ (or ‘Rights’ and ‘Remedies’). In accordance with the method which he had thus prescribed to himself, Zouche afterwards dealt, in a series of monographs, with the several topics of ‘feudal,’ ‘sacred,’ ‘maritime,’ ‘military,’ and ‘fecial’ law (Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10). His was essentially a logical mind, and the scheme is consistently and persistently carried out. The treatise on Jus feciale is deserving of especial mention as the first work which exhibits the law of nations as a well-ordered system, in which the ‘Jus belli’ is relegated to a duly subordinate position (‘Ist als das erste Lehrbuch des gesammten Völkerrechts anzusehen,’ Von Ompteda, Litteratur des Völkerrechts, 1785; ‘Das erste eigentliche Lehrbuch des Völkerrechts,’ von Kaltenborn, Kritik des Völkerrechts, 1847). It must also be remembered that it was the second title of this work, Jus inter gentes, which suggested to Bentham the happily coined phrase ‘international law.’

With a view to his candidature for the keepership of the archives Zouche compiled in manuscript ‘Privileges of the University of Oxford, collected into a body.’ A transcript of this manuscript is preserved at St. John's College.

[Banks's Dormant and Extinct Baronage; Nichols's Hist. of Leicestershire; Hoare's Hist. of Wiltshire; Kirby's Winchester Scholars; Gardiner's Wadham College; Wood's Athenæ, his Colleges and Halls and his Life, by Clark; [Coote's] English Civilians; Le Neve's Monumenta; Burrows's Visitation of 1648; the Royalist Composition Papers in the Record Office; the Registers of New College, of the Diocese of Oxford, and of the High Court of Admiralty; and private information.]